Chapter IV: Connie

As they drove up the hill, Connie’s bright eyes studied Kenneth curiously, and as she usually said what was in her mind, she finally asked:

“Boy, who are you? One of Guard’s grooms?”

“Hush-sh!” came from her aunt, while Kenneth felt a twinge similar to that he had experienced when he read Hal’s letter about the darkies.

That was bad enough, but this was worse. He laughed, however, and answered:

“I am Kenneth Stannard, your guardian’s son.”

“Oh-h!” Connie said, pursing up her little mouth and moving forward so as to look at him more closely. “I’m so glad. I like boys ever so much.”

Leaning back, she nestled closer to him, and rubbed her blue hood against his shoulder in a caressing kind of way, which sent the blood tingling through his veins and made him forget the groom.

“Will we have a Christmas-tree to-night, with tapers?” she asked, as they passed a clump of pines near the top of the hill.

Kenneth looked distressed. Anything like a Christmas-tree had never come into his experience. He had heard of them at St. Jude’s at Rocky Point, but had never seen any one or knew that they had them in a private house.

“I am afraid not,” he answered. “We don’t have such things here; but if the snow does not all melt off, we’ll slide down hill to-morrow.”

To Connie, who had never slidden down hill, the prospect of doing so atoned for the absence of a Christmas-tree.

“That will be jolly. I wish it was to-morrow,” she said, just as they stopped before the farmhouse.

The short wintry day was closing now, with a prospect of more rain, and the lamps were lighted, and a bright fire was blazing in the parlor, to which Mrs. Stannard conducted her guests after kissing the rosy face under the blue hood. As she wore a big white apron and had a speck of flour on her sleeve, which she had failed to see, Connie mistook her for the cook, and the moment she was alone with her aunt she said:

“I wish we had that nice cook instead of old Thorn, who is so cross,—don’t you?”

“Hush-sh!” came a second time from Mrs. Hart. “There are no cooks here, nor grooms, nor maids. They all wait upon themselves.”

“That’s funny,” Connie replied. “Who is going to undress and dress me, and hear me say my prayers, I’d like to know? You might have brought Jean. Why didn’t you?”

Never in her life had Connie dressed or undressed herself, or said her prayers alone. Mrs. Hart, who meant to bring Connie up religiously, so far at least as ceremony was concerned, was too indolent to do anything which she could put upon another, and had given strict orders to Jean, the maid, that Connie must say her prayers every night, together with the collect for the day. Jean had performed her duty conscientiously, and had enjoined upon the little girl that to omit her prayers or the collect would be a sin. To dress and undress herself Connie did not mind so much, but to have some one keep her going when she said her prayers seemed a part of the prayer itself, and she looked rather sober till they were in their sleeping-room, to which Mrs. Hart asked to be shown. Here she became interested at once in the furniture and the high bed, wondering how she was to get into it. But what pleased her most was the fire, which went roaring up the chimney, sending out great waves of warmth into the big room.

“Oh, why don’t we have a fire like this? It’s so nice,” Connie said, sitting down upon the hearth and holding her hands to the blaze.

Mrs. Hart did not answer, for just then Kenneth came to say that supper was ready, and they were soon seated at the beautifully spread table, where Connie, who was hungry, forgot to ask questions and gave herself wholly to her supper, stopping occasionally to give a loving squeeze to the kitten she had captured, and which lay in her lap purring its content. Kenneth had told her of the dozen more cats, besides a litter of young kittens, in the barn, and the moment supper was over she asked to go and see them. But her aunt interposed. It was too late and too cold; the cats would keep till to-morrow, and she bade Connie come with her to the parlor and be quiet.

The first evening was rather dull for all the party except Connie, whom Kenneth taught how to play cat’s cradle, and told her the names of the felines she was to see in the morning. The deacon nodded over his paper, while Mrs. Stannard exchanged her white apron for a black silk one and then knit assiduously on a sock which she said was for Harry, who was at school at Andover, but spending his vacation with a friend in Kentucky.

“I didn’t know you had another son,” Mrs. Hart said, and then Mrs. Stannard told of her sister and Harry’s mother lying in the graveyard, and of his father lying in the Morris vault, somewhere in Kentucky.

Very little was said of him, but the Morris family was dwelt upon at large as something to be proud of. Mrs. Hart thought she had heard of them, and said she had met a Mrs. Haynes, from Lexington, Ky., presumably the family Harry was visiting, and she found her respect rising a little for the Stannards, who were in a way connected with the Morrises, and whose nephew was a student in Andover and a guest at the Hayneses. At eight o’clock she told Connie it was time for her to go to bed, adding, “I’ll go with you, if you are afraid.”

But fear was no part of Connie’s nature. She rather liked the idea of going alone; it made her feel more womanly. She did not, however, decline Kenneth’s escort up the stairs and through the hall, but insisted upon carrying the candle he lighted, and held it at such an angle that several drops of tallow fell on her dress and on the floor before she reached the door of her room.

“Good-night, Connie. I suppose there is nothing I can do for you?” Kenneth said.

“No, thanks,” Connie replied; then, still holding her dripping candle nearly upside down, she added: “Or, yes, if you will hear me say my prayers and keep me going.”

Kenneth drew a long breath and stopped short, while she continued: “And if you will just unbutton me. I can’t reach ’em very well and hold the candle, too, and the kitten. I’ve got it, see?”

She was squeezing it under her arm, while she put her hand to the back of her dress, trying to loosen the refractory buttons.

Kenneth’s face was scarlet, but the one turned to him was innocent as a baby’s, and he began his task. He did not know anything about a child’s buttons, and his fingers felt like thumbs as he managed to undo them, while Connie hunched her shoulders and squeezed the cat, which she said she should keep all night if her aunt would let her.

“I always have a doll at home,” she said, “and I wanted to bring one with me, but auntie would not let me. I wonder why?”

Kenneth was not especially interested in dolls, and, having discharged his duty as maid, turned to go. But Connie was not through with him.

“Ar’n’t you going to hear me say my prayers and keep me going? Jean always does,—that’s my maid.”

Kenneth drew a longer breath than at first. But Connie was persistent, and made him sit down in a chair while she put the sputtering candle on the floor, and, still holding the cat, knelt beside him with her head in his lap.

“You’ll have to say them with me,—Jean does,” she said, while Kenneth felt the cold sweat trickling down his back as he replied:

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

There was a quick uplifting of the golden head, and Connie’s blue eyes looked wonderingly at him.

“Why, ‘Now I lay me,’ and ‘Our Father,’ and the collect. Auntie is particular about that.”

Kenneth sweat still more, for he had no idea what she meant by a _collect_. Such a thing was no part of the service in the church of The 4 Corners, or, if it was, they did not call it by that. He knew “Now I lay me” and “Our Father,” and used to say them, but had given them up, influenced by Hal, who said they were too big for such childish things. As deacon of the church, his father asked a blessing at the table, and had family prayers Sunday morning, but what the mischief a collect was Kenneth could not guess. Mrs. Hart, he knew, belonged to a church, like St. Jude’s at Rocky Point, and with the rather narrow views in which he had been educated, he fancied a collect might be something heretical, or, at least, not quite orthodox. “Now I lay me” and “Our Father” were all right, and he began to repeat them, stammeringly, but Connie’s steady voice gave him courage and he kept on to the close, when he made a motion to get up.

“Wait, there’s a lot more, and you, Kitty, keep quiet,” Connie said.

The cat kept quiet, and Kenneth waited while Connie went on: “God bless Auntie and Guardy. I put him in because he saved papa’s life.” This to Kenneth. Then she continued: “Bless Jean, and make me a good girl; bless Kenneth and make him a good boy. (I am putting you in because I like you.) Amen!”

Kenneth was sweating now like rain, not cold sweat, but hot, which stood in drops upon his face, and there were tears in his eyes as he thought what a miserable lout he was compared with this little girl, who was not through with him yet.

“Now I must say the collect, and you must begin, for it’s so long. I don’t know half of it,” she said, with a little cuff at the cat, which was trying to escape.

“I don’t believe I know it, either. Can’t you skip it?” Kenneth asked, and Connie answered:

“Skip it! No. That would be wicked. I must say it; and if you don’t know that one, we’ll say the _Stir Up_ one. That’s short and easy. Begin.”

“Oh, Connie, I don’t know that, either, nor what you mean,” Kenneth gasped.

“That’s smart! Not know the Stir Up!” came in a muffled voice from Kenneth’s knee, which the cat was scratching by this time, trying to get away from the hands holding it so tight.

“Keep still, can’t you?” Connie said to the cat, and then began the collect for the 25th Sunday after Trinity, sometimes called “Stir Up Day.”

“There! She’s got away and gone under the table,” she exclaimed, as the kitten made a spring for liberty.

Then she went on to the end and started for the cat, while Kenneth improved the opportunity to leave the room, feeling smaller and wickeder than he had ever felt since he stole melons from a neighbor’s garden. Surely a little child was teaching him, and that night he said the neglected prayer of his childhood, kneeling in the darkness and cold of his own room, and promising himself never to omit it again if fifty Hals were there telling him it was nonsense.